


Tash, Saarai (Lie, Truth)

by The_Last_Kenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Betrayal, Canon Divergence - The Clone Wars: Rako Hardeen Arc, Deception, Episode: s04e15 Deception, Eventual Fix-It, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt Anakin Skywalker, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Manipulative Sheev Palpatine, Mental Instability, Mind Manipulation, Multi, Psychological Torture, Rako Hardeen Arc (Star Wars: Clone Wars), Sheev Palpatine Being A Creep, Short Chapters, Torture, dark side
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 12,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi
Summary: The Rako Hardeen mission goes terribly awry - but Palpatine is never deterred for long.Sidious plots his way to the throne, using Obi-Wan Kenobi as a hostage to the Fall of Anakin Skywalker.A series of bite-sized chapters (1000 words or less) in Obi-Wan's perspective that will, eventually, end happily.(I think.)
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 65
Kudos: 291





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My life is a train wreck,  
> have some angst.

Obi-Wan stares at the rest of the Council in disbelief.

It is telling that only Mace Windu and Yoda are able to look him directly in the eye; the others all shift their gazes slightly away from his when he tries to catch their eye.

“You cannot,” he says slowly, “be serious about this. There are myriad _other ways_. We could simplify this plan, at the very least.”

“Obi-Wan,” Mace says, and it is telling, again, that he is addressing him so familiarly. “We have no choice.”

“No choice.” Obi-Wan’s voice is flat. “We’ve employed that excuse before. Before Naboo. After Geonosis. And again and again, plunging us deeper into this war. You all must see that we have lost our way using that as an excuse!” He is leaning forward in his chair, now, gripping the armrests with his fingers.

“And now,” Saesee Tiin says heavily, “we are left with no choice in this. We are sorry, Kenobi.”

“This will cause incredible damage,” Obi-Wan says. His heart is beating too quickly at the desperate realization that he has already lost this argument. “The war cannot afford to lose any of us.”

“Your loss,” Yoda says quietly, slowly, “a great tragedy, will be. A great burden, on many, not even you can foresee. But demand this of us, does the Force. Demand this, does the office of the Chancellor.”

“Think of this as a way to grow,” Mace says, though he sounds bitter himself. “Give yourself and Skywalker a chance to finally grow past your attachments.”

There is a silence.

Obi-Wan feels something in him crumble, and he dips his head in acknowledgement, feeling as he so often does like the chided Padawan of thirteen years before – despite all his promotions and achievements, he never feels as if he has grown past that single moment in the Council chambers before Naboo.

“All right,” he says at last, structuring his tone, keeping it calm. Mastering himself.

The flash of concern in Mace’s eyes only makes him feel smaller.

“All right,” Obi-Wan repeats. “How exactly shall we murder me?”


	2. Chapter 2

Obi-Wan hesitates.

Just… just for a moment.

No more than two seconds.

But he hesitates nonetheless, feeling Anakin and Ahsoka so close by in the Force. His former Padawan is so bright, even with his shields raised; he has always burned like the twin suns of Tatooine, a fire all his own. Ahsoka is softer, gentler, a clear white overshot with green.

Obi-Wan wonders what he feels like in the Force.

Wonders what the others will see suddenly vanish in just a few seconds, now.

Seconds.

He remembers what it felt like, standing on one side of a red ray shield, watching his own Master duel a monster straight out of ancient legend, terrified.

Remembers watching Qui-Gon’s guard slip—

The burning blade ramming him through, forcing a shocked gasp from between the man’s lips.

How it felt, screaming his disbelief and pain into a howl that made Maul’s eyes dance with glee, but Obi-Wan’s eyes had been riveted on his Master, who hadn’t even been looking at him.

Anakin will never forgive him for this.

 _I’m so sorry,_ he thinks. _If you knew – you would understand, I hope._

He swallows the pill, feeling it break and dissolve sharply, already consuming his mind in a strange and weightless haze.

 _Or maybe not,_ he reflects. _Maybe you wouldn’t understand._

He barely understands, himself.

The bullet strikes him directly over his heart, penetrating his armor neatly, cleanly, but stopping in his protective vest. Only barely, however. Even drugged as he is, he still feels a terrible pain erupt in his chest and he staggers, crying out.

His knees hit the back of the building’s edge, and he falls.

Obi-Wan can’t control his descent. He could break his neck here.

But what scares him, as blackness closes in, is Anakin’s enraged and horrified scream – _“Obi-Wan!”_

And Obi-Wan still doesn’t understand.


	3. Chapter 3

The first week is supposed to be the hardest.

The swallowed vocorder itches and scratches at his throat; his entire body aches and tingles with unfamiliar shape and skin. His skull throbs in a constant headache.

And he has to integrate himself into a band of killers and hunters, passing himself off as a ruthless bounty hunter capable of slaying a Jedi – a famous High Jedi General, no less. It is somewhere between amusing and strange to brag about his own death as an accomplishment. What, after all, is so remarkable about him that people are in awe of his assassination?

But it is the weeks _after_ that really burn.

The slow disintegration of his own self as he molds his entire being into someone else.

The locked down bonds between himself and all his bondmates – Bant, Yoda, Mace, Anakin, Ahsoka, even the one-way bonds between himself and many of his men, especially Cody. His head feels so empty, or stuffed full of cotton… he can’t decide.

It’s… uncomfortable.

A test.

A trial.

Every act of compassion, however slight, earns him glares and suspicion.

Every cruel deed earns him approval.

Rako - Obi-Wan - can almost sense his Master's disappointment from the Cosmic Force, from wherever his scattered essence has gone.

Every time he thinks he has a grasp on how to thwart the plan to assassinate Chancellor Palpatine, something crops up and gets in his way.

This mission may never end.

Or it might end abruptly, and he will die as Rako Hardeen.

This… becomes a distinct possibility when Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano try to kill him.


	4. Chapter 4

Bane is getting away. He’s getting away strangely slowly, almost as if he’s hoping Rako – Obi-Wan – will catch up with him. But Ahsoka is on his tail, abounding with anger and clear focus, and sooner rather than later Bane will make a break for it.

Anakin, standing over Rako Hardeen, is full of still _more_ anger and much _less_ focus. He’s sparking and spitting in the Force, more like a magma pit than a fire, and he’s growling out threats as he traps Obi-Wan on the ground.

Obi-Wan tries to shove him off, but Anakin pushes back with the Force so hard that the Master feels two of his ribs fracture. He cries out involuntarily.

He can push Anakin away if he uses the Force, too.

But Anakin is going to kill him any second now – kill him, murder him in cold blood, and Obi-Wan doesn’t understand _why_ –

\- And if Obi-Wan stops him, it will have to be with a violent display of the Force and the deception will be shattered for everyone.

So, he opens his mouth and tries to speak.

Blue eyes widen in shock as Anakin raises one hand and curls it, and an invisible gauntlet closes around Obi-Wan’s – Rako’s – throat, choking him, strangling him.

A desperate wheezing gasp escapes Obi-Wan’s lips, but no words. His eyes bulge and his cheeks turn pink.

_No._

No, the boy he raised to Knighthood, he’s not – he’s not _capable_ of this –

“The Chancellor himself,” Anakin spits down at Rako Hardeen, “told me where to find you. He knows what you deserve. Consider this government-sanctioned execution, you piece of scum.”

Obi-Wan’s vision is beginning to white out, flashing dizzyingly with the combined pain of his ribs, the foot grinding into his abdomen, and the strangling hold on his throat. But he has enough left in him to recognize a swell of _confusion_.

The Chancellor? The Supreme Chancellor himself had – but, no. Surely not. Surely this is a misunderstanding.

The man that all this had been done to protect – he didn’t even _know_ about the Kenobi-Hardeen operation.

And if he somehow did – why would he give the game away?

The Chancellor had let something slip by accident.

_Something._

With a monumental heave, Obi-Wan barrels through the carefully constructed, inhibitor implant-aided walls blocking his mind from Anakin’s.

As the pain becomes unbearable, he screams, _Anakin!_

And feels an explosion of emotion from the man standing over his dying body, just as his world goes black.

_NO!_ Anakin's voice howls.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> firing off chapters like blaster bolts,  
> no hesitation, we die like Clones

Obi-Wan groans.

He freezes.

Groans again, trying and failing to articulate proper words. But even without that, it is obvious that his voice is again his own – the vocorder had been removed, and painfully, by the burning sensation in his throat and the taste of copper.

Slowly, he raises his eyelids.

They feel heavy, bruised.

He is staring up at a blank grey ceiling, completely plain. The walls are black metal so perfectly formed that there is not a flaw, scratch, or door seam that catches the dim light. He is… on his back, strapped to a chilly table that is sapping the heat from his very bones.

Obi-Wan realizes that he can’t move anything except his fingers and toes. Even those barely respond to his commands.

Not even his head will turn.

He groans again, and a door opens out of nowhere, allowing a single figure into the room.

…Chancellor Palpatine.

The man has covered his usual decadent robes with a black cloak, and his grandfatherly face is twisted in a menacing scowl.

His eyes…

They are a familiar gold.

Obi-Wan feels his heart stop for a second.

Everything comes rushing back.

Anakin – _where is Anakin?_

What is going on?

The mission – but – _no –_

The _lie_ , a dozen lies, a thousand lies, stretching back over a decade, all centering on _this man._

“Master Kenobi,” Palpatine says silkily, his eyes blazing a sickly yellow. “How kind of you to rouse yourself.”

Obi-Wan stares coolly back at this… monstrous apparition, his mind working overtime, trying to piece together the truth. His head feels strange. He has been drugged again, he is certain of it.

With a massive burst of concentration, he growls out through uncooperative lips, _“…Anakin…”_

Palpatine laughs. “And I thought Skywalker was the single-minded one. I assure you, _my_ protégé is perfectly well. Unless you count his impotent rage against the Jedi Council for their deception, and for his own failure to save you. Cad Bane swooped in at the last second and pulled you out of there, I’m afraid.”

That is – unexpected.

But if Bane had saved him, why had he been delivered to the Chancellor of the Republic, their supposed target? How deep did this deception run, who had been conning who? What… what…

“What…is…this?” Obi-Wan grinds out.

The drug screams in his veins as he battles against it.

Palpatine’s eyebrows lift minutely. “So you do have some respectable power, after all. Count yourself among a handful who have managed to surprise me, Kenobi. But your power is meager before that of Skywalker, as his is before mine.”

Obi-Wan glares at him. “And… what does he think… of your power?”

“He’s drawn to it. Slowly but surely,” the Chancellor says, sounding pleased and perfectly confident with himself. “He’s very nearly ready for his plunge into the Dark. He’s already tasted it, willingly.”

“Liar,” Obi-Wan says at once.

Palpatine laughs down at him again, a looming shadow towering over the Jedi as he lay immobile and cold. “Fool,” he hisses, and his voice seems to drop three octaves as he does. The sound sends shivers through Obi-Wan and he desperately wants to move, to shift away, however cowardly that may be, but he is frozen.

As the Chancellor looms over him, smirking and radiating black energy, Obi-Wan suddenly becomes aware that he has been stripped of his Hardeen clothing as well as the physical disguise; he is clad only in a set of thin trousers, leaving him essentially completely vulnerable.

“You know _nothing_ of what Skywalker has done, what he has _achieved_ under _my guidance,”_ the Chancellor – the _Sith_ – says triumphantly.

“Your silly laws and your absent-minded teachings, your so-called friendship with the boy, they mean nothing against what _I_ wield. _I_ had his mother murdered and watched him unleash hell on an entire village in retaliation. _I_ threatened his wife and Padawan and watched him exact preemptive vengeance on the perpetrators he could see. He has drunk himself full of the Dark more than once, Master Kenobi, and soon he will know nothing else.”

The chill in Obi-Wan’s bones moves to something still deeper.

His soul, perhaps.

_It can’t be true –_

But the look of Anakin when he had broken Obi-Wan’s bones and promised him death with no remorse… that hadn’t been the look of an unseasoned killer. Those eyes, they had seen death before. Those hands had dealt it without repentance.

Even as Rako Hardeen had given away his true identity and screamed into Anakin’s mind, what Obi-Wan had found was a swirl of power.

And Darkness.

“Now,” says Palpatine softly, and one of his weathered hands comes to rest against Obi-Wan’s cheek, clammy and pale and eerily _possessive_. “You have interrupted my designs for the very last time, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I had intended to have my Apprentice murder you in cold blood. He would have Fallen swiftly, under his dual hatred for himself and for the Council, for the shared blame in your death.”

And Obi-Wan can picture it.

Anakin… _would_.

His stomach rolls.

“That opportunity is taken from me,” Palpatine hisses. His pale lips stretch in a malevolent smile, leaning much, much too close to Obi-Wan’s face as he speaks, his breath misting across the Jedi’s skin.

“But for all the Council knows, for all _Anakin Skywalker_ knows, you were found out due to Skywalker’s rash actions and have been taken hostage by the Separatist forces who were so intent on orchestrating my death.”

He falls silent for a moment, and his breath drifts across Obi-Wan’s face again; the Jedi struggles not to cringe, not to show weakness of any kind. He has a feeling that small resistance is all he has left in his possession.

Palpatine smiles again. “…I can use that. I can use all things for my own ends, Jedi pet. Watch me rebuild the universe. Watch Anakin Skywalker impale the galaxy and his own self on my blade… in your name.”

And Obi-Wan feels _fear_ seize his heart.


	6. Chapter 6

Once again, Obi-Wan finds that the first week is only an introduction to the drawn-out suffering in store for him.

He spends most of his time strapped to that cold table in that barren room, being fed nutrients and drugs through pumps and needles, feeling his muscles begin to atrophy, trapped as he is utterly immobile. Every so often, Palpatine would enter the room.

To gloat.

To flood his ears and mind and soul with dark tales.

The war. The false war, engineered and controlled by this one man before him. Completely unnoticed by the galaxy, the Senate and armies and Jedi that surrounded him daily.

The murder of Bonteri.

The Clones… the men… _his_. Ordered and created on his whims. _Why?_

Geonosis. Manufactured.

Every battle, of course, overseen by this singular mastermind. Every single death, Separatist or neutral or Republic, could be placed squarely at his feet.

The Jedi’s slow weakening as their numbers thinned, and the public turned against them, and the Senate controlled them – all deliberate.

The kidnapping and murder of Shmi Skywalker – which Anakin had never _told_ him about, not even an inkling – all orchestrated.

Obi-Wan had known Anakin and Padmé were a couple.

He hadn’t known they were legally married on Naboo.

But it makes Anakin that much more vulnerable, whenever his wife, _his_ _wife_ , is deliberately placed in peril. Slowly convincing Anakin that he can have it all, that he _deserves_ to have it all, that the only things between himself and glory and security and happiness are the Council…

And Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan learns of not one, not two, but more than three dozen organized attempts to kill him in the last thirteen years.

At first, to remove young Skywalker from the only ally he had in the Order, after the death of Qui-Gon Jinn.

Later, after an attachment had grown, to deprive Anakin of his only friend.

After that, it is merely a punishment, something to break Anakin, to undermine his confidence in himself and his loyalty to the Light, to take away something from him that would hurt.

But Palpatine had come to realize just how deep that attachment, that _friendship_ , he says, with a mocking lilt, has run. How deeply Obi-Wan Kenobi’s tenacious loyalties have kept Anakin grounded even when they are at odds. Fighting over attachments, over battle strategies, over Council orders.

And a plan had formed.

The obvious solution.

If Anakin could be made to blame both Obi-Wan and the Council for a terrible deception, or _himself_ and the Council for a deception that resulted in the Padawan losing, or even murdering his former Master, well.

Anakin’s already tenuous hold on the Light would snap backwards into something terrible.

Obi-Wan’s entire importance… his whole _existence_ for the past _thirteen years_ has been nothing more than a irritation, and then a tool, in a long gambit to convert his apprentice to the Dark Side. His failed teaching skills are not only a cause of friction, but a laughingstock, an utter disaster.

He is a failure of a Jedi.

A failure of a Master.

A failure of a friend.

If Obi-Wan had possessed any measure of self-respect before hearing these stories, it would have shattered then.

(Fortunately, he did not.)

(Twelve years as an unwanted apprentice and twelve more as an unwanted Master will do that to a man.)

And so he listens helplessly as the stories evolved into plans for the future, how his final failure in the venture of Rako Hardeen would bring Anakin Skywalker – and the galaxy – to their knees.


	7. Chapter 7

“You can still feel the Force.”

It’s not a question.

Palpatine is ascending again into one of his gloating speeches, and if Obi-Wan were the kind to admit fear to monsters, he would confess to a ripple of dread at this particular opening.

“Can’t you?” Palpatine presses for a response.

Obi-Wan lies flat on his back as he has been for weeks now, forced to gaze either at that blank ceiling or the face of his captor – his Chancellor – his lifelong enemy, the mastermind behind everything that has been taken from him.

Palpatine doesn’t need an answer.

But he wants one, and Obi-Wan knows that if he does not get something out of his pet Jedi, he will find a way to inflict greater pain later.

Knowing that this Sith has the power to destroy anyone Obi-Wan cares for with a simple command – Satine, Cody, Ahsoka, Anakin, any of the Jedi, an innocent civilian – motivates him.

He arches an eyebrow sardonically. “Certainly I can feel the Force, though it is as useful to me as my limbs at the moment. You wouldn’t happen to have a key for these bindings, would you? I have some unfinished business to attend to.”

Palpatine laughs, that same irritating, cruel chuckle.

Obi-Wan is tired of listening to it. 

“I’m sure you do, but fortunately, my unfinished business takes precedence.” Palpatine leans a little closer, every line in his once-kindly face thrown into sharp relief. He looks strangely… dewy.

Obi-Wan wonders if he bathes in the blood of innocents to keep himself looking fresh and has to bite back a slightly hysterical laugh that would certainly get him into trouble.

“You can still feel the Force, although you’re too weak to access it in any meaningful way,” he muses, tauntingly. “Can you feel Skywalker searching for you? His anger, his fear?”

Obi-Wan is stubbornly silent this time.

Yes.

Yes, he can feel Anakin.

The younger man is radiating flames, his determination mingling with oscillating terror and rage.

Anakin calls for him, often, his voice as desperate and angry as it was the moment Obi-Wan fell over the ledge with a blaster bolt smoking in his chest; his former Padawan does the psychological equivalent of slamming his fists against the distance and drug-induced walls that separate their minds, frantically searching for clues.

Obi-Wan had called back to him at first, only to go unheard.

Whatever Palpatine has done, Obi-Wan is left mute while he can hear every scream and accusation sent his way.

“Soon you will feel him Fall,” croons Palpatine, savoring the idea like fine wine, the words slipping between his too-near lips like smoke. “He called his dear friend the Chancellor two days ago, venting his outrage because the Jedi High Council has forbidden him to continue searching for his kidnapped former Master. In the course of our conversation, I watched him, helped him, turn that frantic energy into… something more useful.”

Obi-Wan feels anger of his own heating his heart.

He cannot release it into the Force.

Can’t so much as clench his fingers in frustration.

Useful?

_Useful?_

Anakin’s untamed emotions, a tool?

Whether they’re repressing or manipulating him, most of the galaxy seems hellbent on using Anakin Skywalker like a piece in a game.

And Anakin… is uncontrollable. Palpatine – Sidious, he calls himself – _knows_ this. Obi-Wan doesn’t want to think about how many ways the Sith is planning to break Anakin in order to make him malleable.

That is what is happening, now, with Obi-Wan strapped to a table. A pawn in the plot to shatter his dearest friend, his only Padawan, his brother. Futile emotion rolls through his veins like a tidal wave. Palpatine senses it. He smirks and cards a hand through the Jedi’s hair, amused when Obi-Wan grits his teeth.

“Skywalker’s possessive nature is coming out in full. He causes unease in his wife and apprentice.”

Obi-Wan can picture this.

He wonders, briefly, punishing himself for the hypocritical judgement as he does – what _right_ does a man who has done nothing worthy have to judge his brother? – if Anakin has ever been capable of loving selflessly.

Especially Padmé Amidala.

Even at nineteen, Anakin had approached her with such powerful awe and lust, that Obi-Wan who had _walked away_ from his war-tested love with a sharp-tongued Duchess for both their sakes, had not understood.

Even at nineteen, Anakin had somehow persuaded an independent-minded Senator from amused affection and slight uneasiness into an all-consuming love.

Into forbidden marriage.

How hard had Anakin pushed Padmé’s limits in the name of love?

“His relationship with the Order grows ever more strained,” Palpatine continues his list, pleased. “His men are wary of his ability to lead them like this. And every day his hatred for the government and himself grows – the Senate and the Council sent you away, after all, and he nearly killed you, only to be beaten by a bounty hunter and have you stolen away…”

The Sith pauses.

His eyes gleam.

“And of course, he also hates you.”

Obi-Wan knows.

He _knows_.

The moment where he wore Hardeen’s appearance and felt Anakin glaring down at him, vividly imagining murder—

It’s not the first time Anakin has imagined the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Sometimes, his dark imaginings leaked across their bond. Not all were nightmares.

Obi-Wan is the living, breathing personification of everything that stands in Anakin’s way.

Controlling. Restrained. Rule-abiding.

The person that _should_ have died, so Qui-Gon Jinn could have trained Anakin.

Obi-Wan knows that Anakin _loves_ him; he knows that Anakin _hates_ him, too.

His former Padawan feels emotions so strongly… it’s a simple thing for him to cross the line between the two, almost without noticing he is doing it.

Obi-Wan tunes out the rest of Palpatine’s gloating as best he can, wishing he could just stretch his limbs, wanting to feel something burn that isn’t his heart.

“He hates you,” says Palpatine.

_I know._

“He’s coming for you,” promises the Sith.

_I know._

_I wish he wouldn’t._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1000 words exactly.  
> 1000 words of pain, darlings.


	8. Chapter 8

There is a stretch of time where General Kenobi is left entirely alone.

For days. Maybe weeks.

Utter, deafening silence and the endless ache of cold, the pangs of hunger that the serums cannot satisfy, the longing to move that he cannot indulge.

Normally, he would sink into meditation to escape.

But here in this place, it is so hard to protect his vulnerable inner Light from the overpowering Dark that is embedded in the walls, that rolls off the Sith Lord no matter how far apart they may be.

The enemy has been pulling at his defenses so long that Obi-Wan begins to feel that all he has strength for is holding them just barely in place. Perhaps it is a good thing he can’t move. Any distraction might shatter his concentration, and he would drown.

And so Obi-Wan is left to hover in that awful place between awareness and meditation –

His thoughts.

They ponder over and over again on his failings.

His troubled youth, the endless rejections from Masters who didn’t want him, the bullying from Bruck Chun who almost always managed, somehow, to make Obi-Wan appear the villain when their elders came to check.

The coldness with which Qui-Gon Jinn had treated him, like Obi-Wan was a burr stuck to his robes.

The distance between them that had never been mended, merely ignored, after Melida/Daan, after New Apsolon.

A few fleeting years of agreeable partnership, mission successes.

That _moment_ in the Council chambers.

Obi-Wan’s glass ceiling.

Years of trials and heartache and slip-ups, rejections and disappointments, and just when he had begun to feel comfortable and independent, worthy, _perhaps_ , of being peers with his already-Knighted friends and with Qui-Gon… his Master had tossed him aside like that damned burr, enraptured with the power and hot-burning heart of Anakin Skywalker.

Obi-Wan had peaked sometime before that day, he knew.

Is it so _surprising_ , in the end, that the thirteen years between then and now were such a waste? That the precious child that Qui-Gon had so favored had been ruined by Obi-Wan’s guidance, his very presence?

No.

It is not surprising.

Anakin, and all that is wrong with him, can be laid at Obi-Wan Kenobi’s feet.

Palpatine is merely taking advantage of Obi-Wan’s failures.

And the 212th… the men he had led for three years, in and out of battles, some of them hellscapes that he could not bear to dwell on even now.

He had discovered the Clones, led them into war.

He has used them, tried to love them, and yet never once _noticed_ that they were all being used like toys in the hands of a child who didn’t care how damaged they became. Oh, he had noticed they were being used by the Republic.

But the Sith?

The Chancellor?

He ought to have _seen_.

His troops trusted him, and he has betrayed them in the worst way.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes against hot tears, picturing Cody and the others being separated after the loss of their General, of shinies dying because they’ve been given to GAR commanders who don’t give a damn about them, their invaluable individual lives.

He has abandoned them willingly.

And now he is trapped here, waiting to be told that they are all _dead_ –

Waiting to hear that they have lost.


	9. Chapter 9

_Obi-Wan!_

Anakin is screaming in his head again today.

Obi-Wan cannot resist trying to answer, although he knows that he will not be heard. He can never ignore Anakin.

 _Anakin,_ he murmurs. _Anakin, you must be calm. Please._

 _Obi-Wan!_ Anakin keeps calling, oblivious to his Master’s words. _Obi-Wan, answer me! Please! I’m looking for you, I swear, I’m still looking!_

 _Don’t look for me,_ whispers Obi-Wan. _Stop and look at what’s around you. Search your feelings. Find balance._

_I can’t._

For a split second, Obi-Wan’s heart leaps as he thinks he’s been heard, but then—

 _I can’t do this. I need you! Why did they take you away? Why did you agree to that damn mission?!_ Anakin’s anger simmers, rises to a boil. _We’re supposed to be a team, The Team!_

A pause.

The heat turns to a terrible chill. Anakin feels small, frightened, as well as frustrated.

 _Where did they take you?_ He shouts. _Why did they take you? I don’t understand… it’s my fault; I should have been there for you, protected you. If I had better control… I nearly killed you. And now –_

Anakin is just venting now.

Some small, selfish part of Obi-Wan wonders if _this_ is the only good thing he has ever become – an imaginary paper-person for the Chosen One to scream at. His punching bag when he’s angry at the war, at the Council, at the rules, at his Master himself. His comfort object when he’s afraid, or weary, or in need of human contact. And now a void to talk into, a quiet bond where Anakin can pretend he’s communicating when really he’s just… blowing off steam.

 _-now you’ve been taken,_ Anakin mourns. _What do they want with you? Why… it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense! Why you, why you in the first place for this stupid mission instead of a Shadow, or at least someone without an active command, or a lineage?_

Obi-Wan freezes.

His brother is dancing on the edge of the truth.

All he has to do is calm down and look, to question his faith in Palpatine, but…

 _And now a bounty hunter abducts you? What the hell for?_ Anakin exclaims, and Obi-Wan can see him clutching his head, overwhelmed. _I know you’re not dead! I can sense you! So why keep you? For three months?! Just…_

Anakin’s next words aren’t intended for Obi-Wan at all.

He’s screaming at fate, now. The Force. The galaxy.

_GIVE HIM BACK!_


	10. Chapter 10

Sidious… Palpatine… he’s back again sometime after that painful one-way conversation, looking as smug as ever.

“It is very nearly time,” he says. “Are you excited, Master Kenobi?”

Obi-Wan summons up three months – Anakin _said_ it was three months – worth of pent-up ire and fixes the Dark Lord of the Sith, the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, with a glacial glare.

Palpatine is not at all bothered by this.

“I see you are,” he says, oozing affected graciousness.

“You will not win,” Obi-Wan tells him with strength he doesn’t feel, conviction he lacks. “Maybe you’ll succeed for a moment – an hour – a day – a year. A decade, two. But you can’t win this, it’s not a game, and the sentient beings of the galaxy are not your pawns. They will not bend because you say so, not forever.”

Palpatine’s smile drops.

Just a little.

But Obi-Wan sees, and feels hope, even as the Sith raises his white, soft, politician-clean hands and summons up lightning that rattles his skull and stabs his veins.

Blue fire.

Pain.

His body yearns to thrash, to writhe, to escape - but the Negotiator is trapped.

_Just a little hope._


	11. Chapter 11

Anakin speaks again.

It’s been at least a week since Sidious electrocuted him, and Obi-Wan’s flicker of hope is little more than a candle flame, burning soft somewhere deep.

But then Anakin speaks—

 _Master?_ He says quietly.

 _I don’t know if you can hear me,_ he continues. _For the sake of the last few weeks, I kind of hope not._

There’s a long pause.

_But for the sake of Here and Now, I hope you **can**. _

_Anakin,_ whispers Obi-Wan.

He’s tired. The lights hurt. His entire body feels, somehow simultaneously, like formless gelatin and like over-worked metal, rigid and bent out of shape. The Dark is ever louder.

If his brother didn’t say it so often, Obi-Wan thinks he might have forgotten his name by now.

 _Obi-Wan, I’m sorry,_ says Anakin.

It’s the first time in a long time that the younger man has said that, much less said it _sincerely_ , and it gives Obi-Wan’s addled mind pause.

 _What?_ He asks, although he knows he isn’t being heard.

 _I’m so sorry, Obi-Wan. I…I’m so sorry. I’ve been so blind. I’m coming for you – Ahsoka and Rex and Cody and I, and, hell, half the Council!_ He sounds tired, but excited – his voice brimming with rising confidence. _We’re coming for you._

Obi-Wan stops breathing.

 _Anakin,_ he says, louder. _Anakin?_

 _I’m coming!_ Anakin yells. _We’re so fucking close, I swear - I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough or stable enough – I listened to a Sith, Obi-Wan, rather than you._

Another pause.

_I’m a fucking idiot._

A different sort of pause, lit up with grief and joy and a blinding amount of _hope_.

_We’re coming for you, Obi-Wan, and we’re going to set things right. I promise you._

Obi-Wan feels his eyes burn in tandem with the flame in his chest. _I believe you._

And then Anakin Skywalker is standing over him, tousle-haired and wild-eyed and grinning with tears in his familiar eyes. _“Obi-Wan,”_ he says, frantic. “Obi-Wan, Master, I’m here—” He reaches out to touch the older Jedi’s face, looking overwhelmed with relief.

Obi-Wan gasps, smiling back up at him. “You’re _here—”_

“I’m here,” says _Sidious_ , suddenly standing where Anakin had been, and it is _his_ clammy hand that comes and caresses Obi-Wan, _his_ mocking smile that replaces Anakin’s gleaming grin.

Obi-Wan’s entire being whites out in shock and pain and devastating realization.

“I’m here,” laughs Sidious. “Would you like to guess where Skywalker truly is, at this moment? He and his Padawan have just been arrested for tracking down Cad Bane and his associates and killing them without due process.”

No—

“Young Tano, rumor has it – and sadly, no security cams can disprove, how inconvenient – struck first. She’s to be handed over to a military tribunal, where she will undoubtedly face the death penalty.”

_NO—_

“The Jedi High Council has been forced. They will surrender her to the GAR by tomorrow morning.”

_No, no, not Ahsoka, they can’t, they—_

“And Skywalker has been incarcerated for initiating the manhunt and allowing the slaughter.” Palpatine digs his fingernails painfully into Obi-Wan’s scalp, delighted when this last addition of physical pain unleashes the tears of despair Obi-Wan has been keeping at bay.

“Did you really think my protégé would come to the truth and still choose the Light? Choose _you?”_ The Sith asks.

Obi-Wan reaches in vain for the _calm-joy-conviction-love-courage_ that the false Anakin had been projecting and finds only a muted rage, where his former Padawan’s fury has been contained by Force-suppressants. 

Hot tears trail down his face, falling to either side as he stares upwards at the black ceiling.

Palpatine leans in and _licks_ one of the salty drops off his flesh, his hot breath making the tears feel like ice in comparison.

Obi-Wan cannot help the crushed whimper that forces its way from his clenched teeth.


	12. Chapter 12

_Obi-Wan,_ comes Anakin’s voice.

 _Anakin,_ Obi-Wan sobs. _Anakin, I’m sorry. I don’t know…_

 _Obi-Wan, I… Ahsoka…_ Anakin’s voice is shattered, warped. He sounds lost. Obi-Wan can understand that feeling. He’d first tasted it on Melida/Daan, then again after Bruck and Xanatos and Telos, and again on Apsolon.

He’d drowned in it after Naboo.

And for the past…four months?...he has felt it permeate his entire being.

 _They killed…_ Anakin’s voice breaks all over again. _They killed her. They killed my Padawan, they killed her, she’s dead, Obi-Wan. How could I let them do that? I should’ve… I should’ve killed all of them rather… I don’t…_

Hot, suffocating anger.

Like heat waves rising out of an oven, or reflecting off dry desert sand, or boiling off of magma.

 _Monsters,_ snarls Obi-Wan’s beloved, broken brother. _Corrupted, selfish, blind! They—Snips. My ‘Soka. They executed her! Why, Master? Why?!_

Obi-Wan screws his eyes shut.

He hadn’t even felt his bond with the young Togruta die.

What does that… what does that say about him?

Had she…

Obi-Wan’s heart tears anew.

Had she called for him, reached for him, before she died? Ahsoka had done so before. Merely her Grandmaster he may be – had been – but she had reached for him at their lowest moments, seeking strength, giving it, even doing simple things. Like locating one another in the dark.

Or just brushing by, checking in.

The mental equivalent of a quick squeeze of the fingers, a moment of contact.

Why hadn’t he _felt_ her?

What had they done to her – or what had _he_ _not_ done?

 _Ahsoka,_ Anakin storms, bereft. _Ahsoka, Ahsoka! I LET HER DIE. How could I?! This – these people – they’re vile! THEY should die! And where are you, Obi-Wan? Why won’t they give you back? Dangling you just out of reach like a prize, like—_

There’s an ugly pause.

 _Well, then,_ snarls Anakin. _They can have you. I’ll find you, one day, soon, but right now – I have a war to win, Master, and I CAN win it. Alone if I have to._

_I’m strong enough._

_I’m the Chosen One._

_No!_ Obi-Wan screams, trying in vain to thrash in his bonds. _No, Anakin, no!_

 _I’ll find you eventually, Obi-Wan,_ Anakin swears to him, finally sounding certain. _And when I do, everything will be changed._

“At least, this is what I’m predicting he will say,” Sidious purrs from the bedside, looking thoughtful. “Tano faces the tribunal tomorrow morning. Skywalker’s Fall is so close I can taste it.”

He stops.

Smirks at his captive.

“Let me know when he really does start talking along that pesky bond of yours, why don’t you? It’s been dull as tombs, having him incarcerated. It was much more fun when he _was_ able to speak to you, pet."


	13. Chapter 13

Obi-Wan _screams_.

Every nerve in his body is on fire; every possible pain response is flailing in vain, desperate to move, to fight, to get away, but he is pinned perfectly still.

Screaming is the only outlet.

He’d been screaming non-stop for what feels like hours.

It feels as if his blood is boiling in his veins.

His organs are _twitching_ , writhing as if in death throes. He can feel them squirming beneath his skin.

There is no part of him that is not in agony.

Just on the edge of pushing his limits – any farther, and his body would shut itself down to hide from the pain, but this –

This keeps him _just on the edge_ , constantly longing for relief.

Knowing that he has no options.

His vision sparks nauseatingly. Red, white, black, white, grey, black, red, red.

His eyeballs are about to burst from his skull.

And even if he was able to move, there would be no wound to treat, no weapon to fight.

The pain is absolute because it is entirely in his mind.

The brain decides what pain is, where it is, how it feels.

And Sidious is convincing his brain that every nerve is on fire, being torn, stabbed, crushed.

Obi-Wan’s voice gives out.

Tears flood his eyes with bitter salt that spills over his face, and somehow, the pain increases. The Jedi keeps his mouth stretched wide open, trying in vain to cry out, but all that he feels is slick blood in his throat and a sensation of air passing between his lips.

 _Anakin, Anakin, Anakin_ – he turns his screams inwards, outwards, praying that _somehow_ his Padawan will hear him.

But he can sense nothing.

Anakin may as well be dead.

Perhaps he is.

Perhaps the Sith torments him because his plans have failed, and all there is left to do for Obi-Wan, for everyone, is die at his malevolent hands—

Fire, ice, hot, cold, crushed, stretched, torn, compressed, suffocated, drowned, breathless, blind –

His brain insists that he is feeling all of these things.

And so he does.

There.

Darkness.

Coming.

Blessed, blissful unconsciousness…

The pain stops.

The embrace of sleep vanishes, and Obi-Wan takes a ragged gasp, sobbing silently, longing for it to return.

His body is at war with itself as his brain tries to understand how the torments have happened all while receiving signals from the body that simply say tired-sore-cold.

 _Agony,_ his brain insists, _torture, fire, ice, anguish._

 _Tired,_ his body says, _cold, stiff, sore, weary._

Obi-Wan’s vision swims.

A sickeningly familiar hand cards through his sweaty hair, and Sidious leans into view, looking grossly satisfied.

The touch, at first, causes an avalanche of pain, and Obi-Wan gasps again.

Then reality (is it, truly, more _real_ than the anguish was?) takes over, and the touch is simply a touch, unwelcome though it may be.

The hand trails down Obi-Wan’s face, stroking his beard, and then clammy fingers are almost gently pushing on his jaw. Obi-Wan realizes that his mouth is still stretched wide in a soundless scream. His jaw throbs as the hands gently loosen the locked muscles and close his mouth. Stiff muscles and joints slowly begin to relax.

There is not even a moment for the Jedi to feel a bit of relief at the sensation before the cold, invasive fingers begin to explore. One dips down his chin, stroking slowly through his beard and then down, like ice gliding across granite, down his neck, hovering over his exposed throat.

The other hand remains on his cheek for a second, and then the fingers dance over Obi-Wan’s closed lips, caressing them.

One finger glides to his cupid’s bow, and then dips down and slips between Obi-Wan’s trembling lips.

Obi-Wan, disoriented, sick, his heart so constricted by fear and digust that it actually, physically pains him, reacts at once. He can’t speak, can’t so much as gargle or cry out, but he bites down on the invading finger.

Palpatine withdraws.

His golden eyes flash like hot magma.

Obi-Wan manages a faint, blood-choked groan. A whimper, or a defiant word, even he is not sure.

An instant later, the hand beside his mouth clamps tightly down over his lips, silencing what little voice Obi-Wan has left, and the hand on his neck shifts and tightens around his throat, trapping his breath.

Obi-Wan tries to struggle, but as always, always, _always,_ there is _nothing_ he can do.

“Do not,” Sidious hisses, “attempt to resist me.”

And then –

Obi-Wan’s eyes fly wide in uncontrollable _horror_ , screaming inside his head, fighting, arguing with himself, his own consciousness at war with the false reality the Sith is implanting in his mind, and it must be false, it _must_ be, no matter how _real_ it looks—

It must be false—

Has to be—

It _cannot_ be real—

It _looks real_.

It _feels_ _real_.

But it _can’t_ be, because suddenly it’s not _Palpatine_ looming too close to his bound form, choking the air from his lungs and suffocating his bloodied and abused mouth, holding him down even though he can’t move—

“Hello, Padawan,” says Qui-Gon Jinn.

The familiar, strong hands that helped Obi-Wan through a thousand katas, that taught him to tie knots and pour tea, that held him through some of his worst visions, are closed over his throat and his mouth, strangling him, gagging him.

The familiar, blue eyes that so rarely showed anything but serenity, with flashes of disappointment or amusement, and sometimes affection, look down at Obi-Wan with open disdain.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and prays for the blackness to return and swallow him whole.

He’s not sure if he’s wishing for unconsciousness or death, anymore.

And he no longer has the strength to care.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upped the chapters because I did finally decide on an ending.

Ahsoka is dead.

Obi-Wan thinks.

Perhaps it’s an illusion, but he doesn’t believe so.

The place in his mind where his Grandpadawan has been for the past two years is empty and sore, like someone has violently torn out a sapling with sturdy roots.

Young but hale.

And now gone.

Obi-Wan grinds his teeth together so harshly he can feel the enamel starting to wear away, and his spine tingles unpleasantly at the sensation and the noise, but it’s preferable to screaming.

Or feeling the empty place.

Ahsoka is dead, and it’s all his fault.

Palpatine has been conspicuously absent all day.

Perhaps he was presiding over the tribunal that sentenced her to death. Perhaps he is even now comforting Anakin, or trying to persuade the Order to release him from his Force-inhibited incarceration.

Dripping his oozing, cloying lies all over the Temple’s clean floors.

Obi-Wan ponders this. Wonders for the first time in a few weeks – days? – how far he is from Coruscant.

Not far, if he’s been able to hear Anakin so clearly up until the arrest.

Ahsoka is dead.

Obi-Wan has failed in a way that feels more… final, than any of the others, the many other failures, in his life.

For Anakin Skywalker he still dreams of hope, because it is Anakin, and there is always hope in that boy, and always has been, since his birth into bitter sands and chains.

For the Order, which has been slowly sinking, mired in lies and bureaucracy for so long, which still has a chance to rise again.

For the Republic, which he has always loved, has committed his life to defending.

Even now – even at the utter mercy of the Sith Master, the man who has killed billions without lifting a finger – Obi-Wan still has a faint flame of hope for all these things.

But Ahsoka is dead.

Ahsoka is _dead._

She grew up in troubled times and spent her apprenticeship fighting a war, facing decisions and heartbreak in two years that previous generations had only seen over the course of decades.

And…

And _Ahsoka is dead._

Obi-Wan had not quite been expecting it, but somehow he feels… he feels…

He’s not sure, but he suspects that this is what it feels like to lose a daughter.

Sidious has no need to torment him today, to light his nerves on fire and fill his lungs with water, to touch him in ways that don’t bear thinking about – to use Anakin as his tormentor… or Qui-Gon.

Not again.

He can't do that again.

Qui-Gon had hurt him for hours upon hours, that well-loved voice speaking his failures with such precision, such disgust.

But this...

Ahsoka...

No, Sidious needs to do nothing else.

Obi-Wan is in enough agony, lying here alone and immobile, his heart bleeding once again.

Neither death nor unconsciousness come near him.

They circle like vultures but never approach.

Leaving Obi-Wan alone with his waking nightmares. 


	15. Chapter 15

Anakin has been on Force inhibitors for so long that Obi-Wan is used to the dull, minute ache of anger and hurt that is Anakin’s presence in his mind.

Tiny.

So tiny, for so long, that Obi-Wan almost doesn’t understand what on earth this eruption of _feeling_ is—

Wave after wave after _wave_ of thought and feeling, so _strong,_ almost overwhelming.

A firework display of light and color.

Anakin Skywalker has returned in full force.

Obi-Wan cannot understand what is going on, what the younger man is feeling, there is simply _so much_ of it.

And then it recedes again, but not back to nothing, no.

Back to how it was before…before things went so wrong.

Before Hardeen.

Before the war, even.

Anakin burns in the back of his mind like a miniature sun, bright and warm and comforting and somewhat frightening, full of raw power and emotion running all over the place, and Darkness and Light.

Obi-Wan gasps.

 _Anakin,_ he says, before thinking that Anakin will not wish to speak to him, not after…

Everything.

Everything.

But Anakin’s voice comes back to him, strong and clear, _Obi-Wan!_ And there is none of that bitter rage and hurt in his voice, or the eerie edge of Darkness.

It’s just _Anakin_.

Obi-Wan begins to weep, feeling hot and cold all over, at this masterful illusion.

 _Please,_ he whispers.

 _I’m coming, Obi-Wan,_ says this kind and fiery Anakin. _I’m here._

 _No,_ says Obi-Wan. _No more._

He tries to summon up the iron will that has carried him this far, but it’s been broken and bruised, and all he manages to summon up is a pitiful whimper.

Sidious presses deeper into his mind, disguised as his brother.

 _Obi-Wan!_ Anakin calls, sweet and strong. _Obi-Wan!_

 _NO!_ Obi-Wan screams back, _hurling_ the flames of his pain and the jagged edges of his brokenness, wielding them like weapons, turning the wounds Sidious has made into tools with which to fight him. The Sith _will_ taste this small portion of the Jedi’s pain.

Obi-Wan will pay for it a thousandfold, but he will not listen to another false Anakin.

Or anyone else.

 _Obi-Wan!_ Anakin cries, sounding horrified. _Obi-Wan, hold on! Please!_

Obi-Wan stares through the shattered glass of his broken heart and damaged mind and the blurriness of tears to find Anakin Skywalker standing over him again, larger than life, looming like a wraith.

He’s saying something, but Obi-Wan _screams_.

With his mind, with his voice.

Screaming, screaming.

The towering Anakin leans closer, opening his mouth to speak, his eyes wild.

And then two more faces appear, and Obi-Wan’s screaming stops.

His heart constricts so painfully that he has to gasp for breath that will not come.

How curious.

And how cruel.

Is it not enough to conjure up a false Anakin by his side?

Did Sidious really have to dream up a false Ahsoka and Padmé, too?

Obi-Wan can’t find the will to scream anymore, so he can hear Anakin clearly, calling his name, and he can hear the false Ahsoka and Padmé speaking, too –

And then he realizes that it was not simply Anakin who had exploded into being in his mind mere minutes ago.

 _Master Obi-Wan,_ says Ahsoka’s sweet voice. _Master, let us help you._

Obi-Wan stares.

The three visions stare back.

“Oh…” Obi-Wan’s voice is a hoarse, frightened whisper. “Are you…real…this time?”

Anakin’s eyes fill with tears.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter posted today, don't miss the last one.   
> Pretty important.

Obi-Wan groans as he is lifted, for the first time in an eternity, out of his prone position.

His muscles throb in protest, but simultaneously it feels… freeing. His back arches backwards involuntarily as gentle hands raise him into a sitting position, and he moans again, trying in vain to control his own limbs.

He still is not sure if this is real.

Qui-Gon was real—

Wasn’t.

He _was_ , once, but not – anymore – and he would never have –

He _can’t_ have done what Obi-Wan’s memories tell him he did.

Qui-Gon may not have cared for his third apprentice, but he would never have raised a hand to harm him, much less pinned him to a table and…

Qui-Gon ended on Naboo.

What came after was false.

(Wasn’t it?)

But then—

Ahsoka had ended, too, so she can’t be here, either.

Which means…

His mind snaps back like a rubber band stretched too far.

“Stop it,” Obi-Wan hisses, feeling his teeth and lips sting, raw from the endless screaming and grinding of teeth. _Don’t,_ he begs, _please stop **stop STOP STOP—**_

“Obi-Wan!” the oh-so-real Anakin shouts. “You need to stop – I know you’re hurt, but you’re projecting too loud—”

Obi-Wan does what he’s been longing to do for Sith knows how long.

He fights.

He does not _care_ what this does to his body, he does not _care_ if Sidious finally snaps and gives him permanent physical damage to mirror the ragged wounds _inside_ —

Obi-Wan thrashes, throwing off the warm, unwanted hands.

 _“Deceiver,”_ he accuses. “I am done, I am done with your lies—”

“We’re not lying—” says the monster wearing the face of his dead Grandpadawan.

 _“Stop it!”_ Obi-Wan screams.

Padmé, false Padmé, she captures one of his flying hands so easily, pressing her wrist to his palm and wrapping her fingers around his own wrist.

He can feel her pulse.

“Obi-Wan,” she says gently. Were the real Padmé’s eyes this amber-brown, her voice so melodious sincere? “Obi-Wan, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. Remember what you felt, when Anakin and Ahsoka spoke to you? Open your mind to us, Obi-Wan, we’re here for you.”

He stares at her, falling still, breathing so heavily after so little fight.

His chest heaves.

“You’ve said that before,” he says slowly, feeling his eyes burn.

Like a child, frightened after a nightmare. And ashamed.

“Sidious always says that,” he says. “With Anakin’s lips, with Ahsoka’s, with Qui-Gon’s. I am so… tired.”

He waits for Padmé to melt away and the Sith to laugh over him, but Padmé’s free hand comes up to cradle his face and she sighs. “I am so sorry.”

“I’m glad he chose to show me you three,” he admits. “It is not so bad, for you three to be my last vision. An unintended mercy.”

“It’s not your last anything,” says Ahsoka. “We’re getting out of here. And kicking Sith ass as we go,” she says decidedly.

“You’re dead,” he tells her. “I didn’t even get to apologize.”

She looks startled; then she looks stricken.

He hasn’t seen her this openly distressed in… quite some time.

Her eyes fly to the false Anakin. “I didn’t think,” she says. “It didn’t – it didn’t occur to me that he could _feel_ that—”

“I felt Ahsoka Tano in my mind,” Obi-Wan says, angry again, his fingers tightening painfully on the pale wrist of the imaginary Amidala. “I always did. Anakin, too. I heard them talking to me. However long it was. Days. Years. I heard them, and then you killed her, and if I get the slightest chance I’ll _kill you_ before I kill _me,”_ he hisses.

Revenge is not the word for what he’s feeling.

It’s just pain, and resignation.

“Stop it,” says not-Anakin sharply. “Stop it, don’t _say_ that.”

“The real Anakin wouldn’t care,” Obi-Wan says, shaking his head.

Here is his proof.

He clings to it.

Not-Anakin looks appalled. “How can you say that!”

Obi-Wan stares at him blankly. “My Padawan loves me as much as he hates me,” he says. “I’ve seen what he imagines. I’ve seen him, rid of me, free of me. I’ll give Anakin what he desires, but I will destroy you with me, Sith.”

“That’s not true!” the apparition cries, voice thin. _“No!_ It’s not true!”

“Amusing,” chides Obi-Wan. “Usually this is where you’d tell me that I’m right. There’s no need to lie about my shortcomings, the despair I created. You may need to create a rapist in my memories of my dead Master, but you have no need to make Darkness out of my own history. I know what I am. Show me your face.”

He is deathly calm.

Not-Anakin has gone white as snow.

Two burning hot hands come up and take him by the shoulders. One moves for a moment, shaking, and brushes over-long ruddy gold hair out of Obi-Wan’s face before returning to grip his shoulder.

“What has he done to you,” says Anakin’s voice, breaking. “What did he _do_ to you, Obi-Wan? _Damn_ it. Damn _him_ , I took too long. I’m so, _so_ sorry, Master, _please_. Please let us take you away from here.”

“Master Obi-Wan,” begs the ghost of his Padawan’s Padawan. “Please. Reach for us again.” She holds out her hands to him, drawing his hand from where he has withdrawn it from not-Padmé, and taking it herself. “Remember when we were stranded on Mimban? A night with no moon. It was raining. We were drowning in mud. And I called out for you, and you answered me. It was like you were right by my side.”

He wishes Ahsoka wasn’t dead.

“Reach for me?” she begs. “Just once more.”

Obi-Wan’s hand twitches in hers. “All right,” he sighs. “For her sake, I’ll let you convince me.”

He reaches out for the hole in his mind where Ahsoka lived.

And finds truth.

The real Anakin Skywalker drags him into a fierce embrace that sends them both crashing to the floor.


	17. Chapter 17

Obi-Wan is being supported.

His legs won’t carry him, his spine won’t stand straight; his arms jerk involuntarily and his head is spinning nauseatingly. His vision swims in and out. He’s too hot. Then too cold.

And there are gentle, strong arms holding him upright.

Anakin has him around the middle and has dragged one of Obi-Wan’s arms around the younger man’s shoulders.

Obi-Wan leans on him, shaking.

Padmé is holding the hand that isn’t around Anakin.

And Ahsoka Tano is in his mind, flooding the bond he had thought was torn out with her light and strength and genuine goodness. _Master Obi-Wan,_ she says, again and again, as if reminding him who he is. _I’m here, Master Obi-Wan, we’re all here. You can do this. Be with us. Be with us._

 _I will try,_ he tells her, and she does not tell him to do-or-do-not.

Instead, she showers him with her belief in him, and that is such a revolutionary thing for the galaxy’s most potent failure that he can’t help the scorch of tears.

Something in his head still whispers that none of this is real.

Something else whispers back that it doesn’t matter if it is or it isn’t.

The feel of his three friends shouts over both of them, insisting on their own reality.

 _Real,_ murmurs Anakin in his mind. “Real,” he says aloud, his breath hot against Obi-Wan’s cheek. It is not invasive like Sidious was, not cruel. It’s just warm and tangible, and Obi-Wan does not cringe at the sensation.

“How can I be sure?” Obi-Wan asks, a question he has never posed to all the previous false Anakins and Qui-Gons and once or twice a Mace Windu.

Anakin gives the only possible answer. “I don’t know, Master. We’ll work on it.”

“Okay,” Obi-Wan whispers.

They’re approaching a huge set of double doors that make Obi-Wan think of a hangar before he rallies his mind enough to ask questions, obvious, important questions that would have been his first priority if he weren’t a worthless wreck.

Anakin nudges along the bond. _Don’t think like that,_ he chides. _I can feel that._

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “Where are we going? How did you get here? Where is Sidious?” His eyes widen, and a shaft of fear stabs him through his chest; the return of terror makes the cloak of warmth and safety he had been feeling that much more amazing. “…The Clones. Anakin, the troops—”

“We know,” Ahsoka says grimly. “We know about the chips. We figured out… a lot of things.”

 _Without you_ , comes the unspoken accusation.

 _Stop it,_ Anakin insists, shaking his shoulder. _You can’t think like that. That’s not what we’re thinking, or saying._

“Sorry,” rasps Obi-Wan.

Ahsoka gives him a slightly worried look, but returns to the point. “We’ll explain the whole story later. Right now, we need to get out of here before…”

“Too late,” Anakin and Obi-Wan say in breathless, horrified unison.

Darth Sidious blows in through the double doors with the force of a tempest, literal Darkness swirling off him in hissing clouds, a black sandstorm. In it, his golden eyes and red saber burn bright. His face is white and set with fury, and his anger lashes out against Anakin and Padmé and Ahsoka.

Ahsoka cringes under a mental assault.

Padmé raises her blaster, only to have it swatted out of her hands by an invisible force. Sidious did not so much as wave a finger to make it happen.

Anakin grits his teeth.

The Darkness of Sidious and the Darkness inside him call to one another even as they clash.

Then Sidious sets his eyes on Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan cannot tear his eyes away from the luminous, mad glare and the proud, sickly smile.

“Master Kenobi,” whispers the Sith. “Have you been dreaming?”

And suddenly Obi-Wan is all alone, standing in the hangar.

It’s just him, and Sidious.

Obi-Wan falls to his knees.

A terrible, keening cry forces its way through his lips, and the places where he thought Anakin and Ahsoka and Padmé had held him felt colder than ice.

“No,” he sobs. “No, no, no, no…”

“Easily deceived,” muses Sidious. “Weak. The minds of Jedi are easily bent, but you, Kenobi, are as pliable as silk.”

Obi-Wan clutches his head so tightly he feels blood under his fingernails and he howls.

_“Obi-Wan!”_ Anakin’s voice reaches his ears.

He wants to ignore it.

But Anakin sounds terrified, raw and vulnerable.

He can never ignore Anakin.

Obi-Wan looks up.

He’s on his knees in the hangar.

Padmé is kneeling beside him, firing off bolt after bolt from her blaster at an oncoming troop of droids.

Ahsoka Tano and Anakin Skywalker do battle with the Sith.

“Obi-Wan!” Anakin screams from across the room. “Wake up!”

Obi-Wan rises to his feet just in time to see Ahsoka go flying backwards, limp and unconscious. He cannot control his use of the Force yet, so Obi-Wan sprints across the room and catches her with his whole body, letting them both fall quietly to the polished floors.

Padmé moves forward to cover the Padawan.

Obi-Wan takes up her lightsaber.

“I’m awake,” he tells Anakin.

And aims his first blow for Sidious’ neck.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back.  
> Just a few more chapters to go.

There is no Death.

There is no emotion,

There is no ignorance,

There is no passion,

There is no chaos.

Except, Obi-Wan cannot recall what there supposedly _Is_ , instead.

There _is_ chaos.

The blade he retrieved from Ahsoka as she fell sings in his hands, green and vibrant. The _color_ is familiar. Ahsoka – Qui-Gon – _no_. The _feel_ of the blade, the grip of the hilt, these are not familiar. The green clashes against a burning red saber that moves so quickly that he can only track it through the Force. His eyes are not enough. Heat scorches his arm, but he does not look, does not scream. A blue blade – slightly deeper and less periwinkle than his own but just as _familiar_ to his eyes – dances with the green. It slices between Obi-Wan and a strike intended for his chest, saving his life.

Anakin is a storm in the Force, all protective rage and betrayal and anguish and fear and loss and power and hope –

So many, many things –

Obi-Wan is sliding across the polished floors, ducking under Sidious’ arm and rearing up behind the Sith to strike at his back, when he realizes the Jedi Code is a lie.

There _is_ emotion - (my failures, my people)

There _is_ ignorance - (lies)

There _is_ passion (you will not win-)

There _is_ chaos.

“Look out!” Anakin shouts.

Sidious is spinning on the spot, already moving to strike Obi-Wan’s head from his shoulders, when Anakin screams.

Obi-Wan doesn’t move in time.

Anakin’s blade meets Sidious’ red one, and it is not the blade which hits Obi-Wan at all, but the Sith’s pale, clammy hand.

Months of unwanted familiarity, of invasive touches and eerie caresses, light up Obi-Wan’s brain in painful fireworks of panic.

**_DON’T TOUCH ME—_ **

Qui-Gon, his expression dispassionate, bandaging his Padawan’s burned wrist.

Qui-Gon, his expression dispassionate, pressing down on Obi-Wan’s throat, his face looming closer, his lips parting in an empty smile.

_“Let him go, Sidious!”_

Obi-Wan is in midair, struggling feebly, his limbs so, so heavy – like weights – like he’s underwater.

But he isn’t. He’s dangling two feet off the floor, clawing uselessly at his own throat as the Sith Master strangles him to death.

Sidious is laughing, that same, damned chuckle that has been plaguing Obi-Wan for months – he longs to scream over it, or smash the Sith’s face repeatedly into the floor, anything to make that cursed laughter stop stop stop _stop_ – but he can’t breathe, and he’s dangling helplessly in the air, and Anakin and Padmé and Ahsoka are staring at him in horror.

Ahsoka is up again, now, her second saber in her hand as she draws herself into a crouch, lips drawing into the snarl of the predator that she is.

Padmé is beside her, and she’s retrieved her second blaster again, and both her weapons are aimed faultlessly at Sidious.

Anakin is mere feet away, struggling to rush closer, but the Force is keeping him at bay.

Obi-Wan, strapped to a table, helpless, forced to listen –

Anakin, locked to the floor, helpless, forced to watch –

As the brother is destroyed –

Obi-Wan cannot speak.

He lets go of his throat and goes utterly still, observing the pain and panic of his own suffocation with disinterest.

He has faced worse.

This is nothing.

He shoves it all aside and closes his eyes, turning his attention inward.

“NO!” Anakin is screaming.

“Master Obi-Wan!” Ahsoka.

“Obi-Wan, no!” Padmé.

He must look dead.

The Force has never left him.

There is no –

There is –

_Anakin,_ he says, _together._

There’s a pause. Then Anakin stops fighting the invisible barrier. “Padmé. Ahsoka. With me.”

Obi-Wan can sense the Sith _hesitate_.

His captive is not fighting. His protégé is not losing control. The two women will not bow.

This is not what he had expected.

There is emotion, and there is peace.

There is ignorance, and there is knowledge.

There is passion, and there is serenity.

There is chaos, and there is harmony.

There is the Force.

And within it –

And without it –

There is something _else_.

Something innate to intelligent life, something the ancients of the Core Worlds – before they had known of the billions of forms of life in the galaxy – had simply called humanity.

More than instinct.

More than feeling.

More than thought.

Something deep, and bright, and more solid than stone.

Soul, perhaps.

Whatever it is, Anakin, and Obi-Wan, and Padmé, and Ahsoka all find theirs in the same way at the same moment.

Obi-Wan falls to the floor of his own accord, landing on his feet and stalking towards Sidious with the unerring grace of a great cat, summoning Ahsoka’s saber back to his hand as he does. Anakin shrugs off the Force holding him back and presses forward on the Sith’s other side. Ahsoka falls in on the right, Padmé on the left.

“And now, Chancellor,” says Padmé Amidala very politely, “we will discuss a new form of government.”

“Discuss?” Ahsoka says, tilting her head, her eyes fixed on Sidious.

“Aggressive negotiations,” say Anakin and Obi-Wan in unison.

“The Council is on their way,” adds Anakin, leveling his saber at Palpatine’s face. “If we can’t defeat him, then we just need to hold him off long enough for the rest to come.”

“Very well,” Obi-Wan says hoarsely. “We’ll succeed, together.”

His eyes fall on something glinting beneath the Sith’s black robes.

“I’ll be taking my lightsaber back, thank you,” he says pleasantly.

Sidious snarls in outrage, floundering. The air around him crackles with Blackness and the scent of ozone as his insane fury begins to override his long-curated patience. In the blink of an eye, he has Obi-Wan’s saber in one hand and his own in the other, his eyes blazing yellow as he breathes, “Then take it, Jedi _pet.”_

All four of them are blasted several steps backwards by a blast of the Dark Force.

All four of them recover the ground at once, stepping back towards the Sith.

“Okay,” shrugs Anakin. And they all move in unison.


	19. Chapter 19

They are locked in battle with the deadliest Sith Master to live for a thousand years.

Obi-Wan understands, now more than ever, the _power_ of the Dark Side.

It demands no patience, accepts no hesitation.

Everything Sidious wants, he _demands_ of the universe, and with expert fingers he gouges it out of the Force, hurling it through his veins.

Just being around him is enough to drown someone.

Obi-Wan _knows_.

He’s been choking on smoke for months now, months—

And wouldn’t it have been… _so easy?_

Trapped in chains forged by the Dark Side, in the house of Sidious, becoming One with the Dark would have freed him in less than a heartbeat. Even the _slightest_ , barest, most wistful _what-if-I?_ would have had him up from that table on his own two feet, his own man, _vivid_ and _lurid_ with power.

It has taken _every ounce_ of who Obi-Wan is to fight off even the slightest desire to give in.

The last time he faced a Sith, far younger and _far_ less mighty, he had _still failed._

Obi-Wan knows he should be more terrified than he has ever been in his life.

Anakin swings past him, his brilliant blue blade carving through the Darkness, his jaw clenched in pure determination. His eyes are on fire, sliding in and out of view as the shadows threaten to swallow him, hide him from sight, but he takes the time to turn his gaze to his former Master, seeking reassurance—

Padmé somersaults into his line of view, springs to her feet, and fires rapidly – she is a pale slip of light in the shadows, the same fierce passion in her warfare as there is in her Senatorial speeches—

Ahsoka yanks Padmé out of the way and catches the red lightsaber on her green one, and Obi-Wan is not reminded of Qui-Gon this time; there is none of that blank determination he remembers from the duel on Naboo. Ahsoka Tano is a torch, a self-sustaining flame, and she lets the fight carry her, slipping between friend and foe, her predator’s fangs bared—

Maul had _survived_ , thriving on revenge, clawing life out of the Dark Side based on pure emotion.

Sidious has turned himself inside-out, replacing all of himself with the Dark Side of the Force, becoming a conduit.

Neither of them had _built_ themselves.

Remade themselves, replaced themselves with metal and wire and whim, _yes_ , but—

Obi-Wan is not afraid.

(There is nothing left to fear.)

The enemy has revealed himself. His openness is as likely to kill him as it is to raise him to victory.

And Obi-Wan… he knows who he is.

More than that, he knows who stands by his side.

Anakin Skywalker is his brother, his dearest friend, his only apprentice. He has suffered through slavery and loss, manipulation and secrecy, war and condemnation from all sides. He has been plucked up by a Sith Lord – The Sith Lord – and moved about like a pawn, had cold fingers shoved into his mind and played with. Treated like a toy. Deprived of family again and again, forced to keep his wife a secret – forced to raise a younger sister on the field of battle.

Endured unspeakable betrayal at the hands of Obi-Wan and Palpatine alike.

And chosen, chosen, Chosen, to make himself.

Anakin is a warrior, fierce and bright and loving, something forbidden out of the ancient days of the Je’daii, something wonderful.

Ahsoka was the unwanted initiate, and then she _grew_ , and changed, was pressed into her role, a military rank given to a fourteen-year-old girl—And when the world was turned on its head, when her Grandmaster vanished and she was put on trial for murders she did not commit, when she was forsaken and dark secrets came writhing out of the woodwork…

She stood firm. She made her choices, _stay-Jedi-have-faith-I-am-a-Jedi-I-do-not-fear-temptation._

Padmé Amidala entered politics at age ten. Was crowned and waged war for her people at fourteen. Became a Senator, became a wife in a marriage she could never revel in in peace, fought the war of the common man and the disrespected solider every day, in and out, thwarted at every turn. She’d been making choices for years.

Padmé has shaped herself carefully. With missteps, but with deliberation.

And Obi-Wan Kenobi is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He has _endured_.

He will choose to endure again.

He knows who he is, and he knows who stands by his side.

Padmé’s next shot jolts Sidious’ overhead strike just a little off course; Ahsoka’s saber slips upwards into the gap and severs his hand from his arm – the red saber falls to the floor, only to be summoned up to land with a thud in Anakin’s palm.

  
Anakin Skywalker stands, a towering avenging angel, human and flesh and metal and heartbeat, and he bears his own saber in one hand and the Sith’s in the other.

He crosses them at Palaptine’s throat.

To kill—

Instead, Anakin turns his head to look at Obi-Wan, and his eyes are soft in a face hardened like stone. “Take back what is yours,” he says.

The Sith pants, screeching something in his Dark Tongue, readying himself for _something—_

Obi-Wan summons his stolen lightsaber to his hand, returning Ahsoka’s shoto to her.

Sidious _jolts_ – there is an animalistic snarl, and **_pressure_** explodes inside their heads like a thunderclap—

When Obi-Wan’s vision clears, he sees this:

Sidious standing, frozen, his white face stretched grotesquely in shock.

Anakin has raised the cross sabers as if to ward off a blow, but he is not – he is radiating power, keeping Sidious contained. Not just the man, but all his power – all of the black Darkness is boiling beneath the Sith’s skin, trapped there, unable to be unleashed.

And in his stillness, a wound.

Obi-Wan is kneeling in front of Anakin as if to defend him, his saber – self-made, carefully created - clutched in both hands, and the blade has pierced the Sith through.

Sidious takes a rattling breath.

He does not take another.


End file.
